Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412240041
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Those companies include Grayson Electronics and Ericsson GE of Lynchburg and ITT Gallium Arsenide of Roanoke.
The concentration of businesses in Western Virginia involved in wireless communications and a strong wireless research effort at Virginia Tech have some people promoting the area between Wytheville and Lynchburg as the "wireless valley."
Virginia Tech researchers have helped develop wireless technology for various electronics manufacturers.
"We're very active right now on interference cancellation research," said Brian Woerner, director of Tech's mobile and portable radio research group. Researchers are looking for ways to eliminate the static on the wireless phone that users have been forced to live with in the past.
Cellular telephones operate in the radio frequency band just above UHF television broadcasts in the 800 megahertz (800 million cycles per second) to 900 megahertz range. The new personal communications services, or PCS, technology operates at a much higher frequency, between 1.8 and 2.2 gigahertz, or billion cycles per second.
The Federal Communications Commission is auctioning off licenses for various parts of the PCS spectrum. The new wireless phones will use the same digital technology to transmit information that computers use and will be the basis for a wider variety of services than current cellular technology.
Because of the wider bandwidth on which the PCS services will operate, they will lend themselves easily to new services such as data transfer, electronic mail and video, Virginia Tech's Woerner said. At the same time, cellular providers will be upgrading their equipment, and he expects an eventual teaming of the two types of service on a nationwide basis.
The PCS phones will require less power to operate and will be smaller and lighter. Because they're digital, more conversations can be crammed onto the same frequencies. That helps reduce the cost of operation.
The range of PCS transmitters is shorter - as little as a quarter of a mile compared with up to 20 miles for cellular - so more of them will be required. Rather than the tall metal towers used for cellular antennas, PCS antennas could be mounted on telephone poles.
Cellular and PCS networks can be designed to work together and already are more alike than they are different. In the future, wireless phones will be dual band so they can operate in both the cellular and PCS spectrum, and customers will be able to use their phones the same way no matter what kind of service area they're in, Bell Atlantic says.
A science-fiction television show once depicted a world where a character was driven mad by the ubiquitous ringing of his wireless telephone. But one of the visions of PCS technology in addition to a single telephone number that can follow you anywhere - from home to work and on vacation - is the freedom to take the calls you want and send all others to voice mail without so much as a ring.
Woerner says if the new technology is used correctly, it will be liberating.
"People will cease to think they have to go somewhere - to a phone on a desk - to communicate," he said.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, who has been a leader in congressional efforts to open up the telecommunications industry to competition, envisions a time not far off when a coupling of PCS and satellite technology will allow a hiker standing on Tinker Mountain to pull a phone from his vest pocket and dial up a friend on top of Mount Rogers or even take part in a video conference.
People will carry wireless phones with them as readily as they do pocket organizers or calculators, he said.
by CNB